


Solstice at Larkfield

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: BRENT Madeleine - Works, Merlin's Keep - Madeleine Brent
Genre: Curtain Fic, Demons (casting out of), English Village, F/M, Fandom Growth Exchange 2017, Folklore, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-17
Updated: 2017-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-18 15:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12390489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: After the travels and adventures ofMerlin's Keep, the newly married Jani and Adam Gascoyne come home to Larkfield, to their comfortable country houseKimberley, just across the valley from Jani's great friend Eleanor and her husband, David Hayward. But there is a dark shadow over the village, and Jani and Eleanor must once again take up arms in search of peace....





	Solstice at Larkfield

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Niki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niki/gifts).



I had promised Adam I would not ride alone while I carried our child, and so I had walked to _Merlin's Keep_ through the bare fields and the reds and golds of the autumn woods at midday. Although David and Eleanor had tried to send me back in the carriage, I was restless and insistent on walking home. When I saw the trap, I was coming back through the beech wood, just where the trees gave way to the short-cropped grass of the ridge. It lay among the drifting leaves, half-hidden, but the evening sunlight picked out the jagged steel and I turned aside from the path.

The trap was not some forgotten half-dead thing, the spring rusted and rotting into the soil, but fresh and gleaming steel with each tooth cruelly sharpened and poised to snap the leg of an unwary fox or deer. Our baby had been kind to me, so the queasiness I felt, looking at it, was unfamiliar and I had to swallow hard and settle my stomach. Traps and snares and gamekeepers with guns might have been a familiar sight on the estates that bordered Larkfield, but Eleanor's father had been a naturalist and he had forbidden hunting and trapping on his own land. Deer came and went freely in Larkfield's woods, badgers trundled along the green lanes, and we sowed enough lettuce in the kitchen garden for rabbits and people. And although Eleanor's field of study was wildflowers, rather than the animals her father discussed, she too was strongly supportive of the way the estate was run. During her brief and terrible marriage to Vernon Quayle, nothing had changed, the villagers stubbornly sticking to what had become a local tradition of co-existence with the natural world. Yet, just months after my beloved Adam and I had returned to Larkfield, someone here had deliberately laid a trap, had chained it to a spike and set it, knowing that they offered a cruel and lingering death to any creature unlucky enough to be caught by those cruel teeth.

When I knew I was not going to be sick, I found a hazel twig and sprung those cruel teeth, and then I tugged and heaved the spike out of the ground and carried the whole back to _Kimberley_ , the trap's heavy steel biting into my hands and the chain leaving wide streaks of mud on my skirt. I left it on the side table in the hall, unwilling to take it into Adam's study or the library where we spent so many quiet hours together, and thought to discuss the whole issue with Adam as soon as he came back. It was not but a couple of hours later, though, that Sophie, our housekeeper, came to me in the drawing room where I worked at my desk, and said that Deacon Hardy was at the kitchen door and was hoping for a word. "He knows fine well, ma'am, he shouldn't have done it," Sophie said, her eyes flashing.

I was still surfacing from the new translation of Xenophon Adam had brought back from London, and my first thought was that we would be celebrating a wedding a little sooner than planned, for Deacon had been courting our housemaid, Mary, and I had caught her cooing over the trunk of clothes Adam's mother had deemed necessary for our own baby more than once. But when I got to the kitchen door, Deacon had none of the half-embarrassed pride of a suitor, but was pale and ashamed. "I didn't know but what to do," he said. "I just couldn't abide it a moment longer, Miss, it were sheer cruelty, and when it took little Susan's goose, well, that was the last straw. So it was me that set that trap, and I know it was wrong, but if you'd seen it..."

"I think you'd better come in," I said.

Fortified with a strong cup of tea and some of Sophie's fruit cake, served at the kitchen table, Deacon set the whole tale in front of me. It seemed that something had been raiding the village hen coops, killing not for food but for pleasure. "It ain't just chickens, neither," Deacon said. "Folks have started keeping their dogs in at night, see, after the vicar's terrier went missing, and Mr Wentworth's best milk cow died last Friday. There weren't but a mark on her, but that she was six miles from where she ought to be and looked like she'd been hunted over every mile. And, miss," he said, his hands clasped around the warmth of his mug and his socked feet twisting under the table, "It ain't no fox, nor even one of those wild cats they get over by the moor. Ain't nothing I've ever come across before."

"Well," I said, uneasily aware that in our own little bubble of contentment, Adam and I had perhaps not been as attentive as we should have been. "In the circumstances, I think one trap-"

"Ain't but the one," Deacon muttered.

"What?" I said.

"Eight, I set," Deacon said. "And nothing in any of 'em. 'Cept this."

He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a twist of black hair and a feather, a long, barbed thing that lay on my kitchen table as if it was far heavier than any feather I had even seen before. Suddenly, the kitchen seemed a little dimmer and colder. Sophie, who had been humming as she prepared our luncheon, was quiet, and even the fire in the range was silent. 

I said, "I know no animal that has both feathers and fur."

"Me, neither," said Deacon heavily. He bit his lip. "It ain't...well, it ain't natural, miss, that's what I think. And I can't help but wonder if the old devil-"

"He's dead," I burst out, for Quayle, who had tried to kill my beloved Eleanor and myself and my own Adam, was cold and stiff. He had been ripped to pieces by a snow leopard in the foothills of the Land of Bod, and I had seen his dead body buried with my own eyes.

"Something like that leaves a shadow in the land," Deacon said. "And mayhap my grandpa would have known what to do, but he's gone and I know not."

Over by the range, Sophie made the sign for warding against the evil eye. 

"Cover that up," I said, for it seemed to me that there was something horribly aware about that unnatural feather, "And tell me. What else has been going on?"

It seemed that Adam and I, and Eleanor and David, all of us caught up in our own happiness, and the plans for Eleanor's wedding, had missed the disquieting events in the village. It was not just the animals. The people too were on edge, scared and angry, disagreements that should have been minor becoming arguments, families feuding, lifetime friends set against each other, children squabbling, lovers parting... Deacon unburdened himself with hesitation, and then with a great rush of words that brought Sophie and then Mary too to the table, explaining and elaborating and sometimes, for I was a relative newcomer to the village, laying out the generations of village families. This was the kind of knowledge my great friend Eleanor would have had at her fingertips, and I could not but feel that it should have been her in my place listening, but when I mentioned this Deacon drew back and glanced at the two women.

They were silent.

Of course, it was Eleanor's disastrous first marriage which had brought Quayle to the village in the first place. Such a wound leaves a scar. 

It became clear that not only would I have to take on whatever demon haunted the village - my breath caught in my throat when I thought the word, the germ of an idea unfolding - but I would have to repair the village's relationship with Eleanor, too. It was a formidable challenge. Yet I had faced worse. I was the daughter of an Indian Princess and an English Captain: I was Adam's wife and Sember's ward, the infant survivor of the assassination which had killed my parents, the child who had thrived in exile in Smon T'ang, who had lived through the voyage to England and the Adelaide Crocker Orphanage, who had found her own place at Eleanor's side and made her own life here in Larkfield, Adam's ring on my finger and our laughter ringing through our home. This was my place and my people, and I would fight for them. 

I said as much, to Deacon and Sophie and Mary, and I could see the new hope in their faces. Deacon was whistling as he walked down the drive, and Mary was still blushing from his swift farewell kiss. Then I bundled up that horrible feather in a length of silk we had brought back from the monastery at Galdong, trusting the blessing of the High Lama, Rild, to keep harm from my house, and sent a telegram to Adam's friend Professor Manson, who had aided us so well in defeating Quayle.

I had my own weapons, too. It is not every child who is given the gift of growing up in two different cultures, but I was such a child, guarded bravely by my beloved Sember in the Smon T'ang, that land of snow and mountains. Some part of me would always be Sember's skinny, stubborn girl-child, who had negotiated her way between Sember's pragmatic, disciplined Hinglish and the rituals and worship of the villagers with whom Sember had found refugee after the death of my parents. In Smon T'ang, demons were a living presence, to be bribed and cajoled and disciplined, and although Sember had always sworn to me that there were no demons in England, it was natural to me to turn to the weapons of my childhood. After all, Quayle was a well-travelled man who had spent some time in the Land of Bod, or Tibet, as it was called in English, enough to speak the language with some fluency. His interest had always been in artifacts of power, and although Eleanor had destroyed or given to Professor Manson all that remained of Quayle's belongings it seemed to me that he could have brought something less tangible back from that country, something that had perhaps been freed by his death. 

That night I lit the candles in the library and banked up the fire. From a few snatches of cloth, an old shirt of Adam's and a red ribbon that Eleanor had given me, from a few hawthorn twigs that came from Goose Hill, where Adam had kissed me for the first time, from a few black hairs gleaned from Adam's spare comb and my hairbrush, I fashioned a pair of demon catchers, one for each door to the house. I hoped Sember would forgive me, for he had forbidden me to do such a thing when we lived in Smon T'ang, saying it was superstitious nonsense. But neither he nor I had known then that there were such creatures as Quayle in the world, with his dark skills and arcane knowledge. I knew more, now. As I bound each trap, I thought of my Adam, who had come back from the dark of his blindness with such courage and such joy, of our child, quietly resting tonight in the cradle of my body, of Sophie and Mary and our groom, Edwin, and our gardener, William, and of every other person who had helped us make _Kimberley_ our home. I told the demon trap of our joy and our strength, and when I called Edwin and asked him to pin the little bundles above the doors, he looked at me out of dark eyes and did exactly what I said. Edwin's grandmother was a Gypsy, a Romani girl who had passed on her clear, dark complexion and her skill with horses and her pride. We were lucky, I thought then, to have not just his expertise with our horses but his understanding. 

Edwin nodded at me, when we were done, and said, "I'll be sleeping indoors tonight, ma'am, seeing as the master's from home."

"Thank you," I said.

In the morning, Adam came back, but I was not at the station to greet him. It seemed that even talking of the demon was enough to draw its attention, for although our house was untouched, our garden was as disheveled as if a great wind had blown through it all night, the last leaves stripped from the trees and strewn in great swathes across the lawn, the vines and the fig tree torn from their trellises, a pane on the greenhouse smashed and all the pots within topsy turvy and spilled. The stable cats were bristling and snarling, although the horses, my own lovely mare Jamilia and Adam's Polaris, were resting quietly. There was a great deal to be done, but a great willingness to do it, although it was disconcerting to see Sophie sweeping the grass with as much energy as she polished the parquet, and Edwin's concentration as he repotted seedlings as tenderly as he handled the young horses. Adam too must have been disquieted, for he leapt from the station gig to find his wife in her oldest pair of riding breeches, all muddied boots and windswept hair, holding the ladder for William as he reset the tiles on the roof. Yet Adam's stride was sure and swift as he crossed our forecourt towards me.

I could not run to him, but I was lit up all over with joy.

"Jani! My love," Adam said, with the smile that came so readily to his eyes these days. He was embracing, perforce, both myself and the ladders. "My love, are we rebuilding already?"

He was so solid and warm in my arms. My Adam, my Mister, who had taken me from Smon T'ang and then been lost himself, only to find his way home. 

"It's a little more complicated," I said.

"Explain later," Adam said, and then he bent his head and kissed me. 

Sophie and Mary had long give up expecting any sense of propriety within the house, but poor William was flushed scarlet when at length he had to shake the ladders to get our attention. We pulled apart, laughing, and let him descend. 

"So," said Adam, "Is this a local whirlwind, or should we be sending help to the village as well? There was no word of damage at the station."

I took a deep breath and met his eyes. It was different now, for when we had fought Quayle, there had been two of us, and now there were three. I spread my hand over the swell of my belly, and said, "There's something I need to show you." I took him into the study, and unwrapped the feather so that it lay across the white of Rild's scarf as a black slash across silk, and I told him the whole of it. My Adam listened quietly, although I could see the way his jawline firmed and his eyes hardened. It is a wonderful thing, to find the other half of yourself and know they will stand with you, shoulder to shoulder, and although I knew this was a battle I could fight by myself, to know Adam stood with me and trusted in my plan was a joy in itself. 

And we were not alone. After lunch, we took the gig to _Merlin's Keep_. Before we had even drawn up at the curved steps of the portico, Eleanor came flying down them to greet us, her red hair and her bright dress a flame of colour against the grey stone and mellow brick of the great house. "Jani!" she called to me. "This is an unexpected pleasure! David and I were hoping you would find time for us, but not quite so soon!"

Her husband was only a moment or two behind her. David had never paid much heed to the social conventions of the county, and he and I had worked together for years, a friendship spiked with such affectionate rivalry strangers often thought us enemies. He greeted me with a gentle hug, and Adam with an smile and a casual handshake. They were not yet bosom friends in the way Eleanor and I were, but they would be, my husband and Eleanor's. 

"We have something to tell you," I said. 

Eleanor must have known from my face all was not well. She ushered us into the library, to the great table in the windows where her father used to work, and called for tea and sherry. "Jani, what is it?" she said. "Tell me quickly. Is it Quayle?"

I reached across the table to hold her hand, Her fingers were cold. "No," I said. "I promise you, he is dead. But it is, perhaps, something of his." It was easier now, having told Adam once, to go through the tale Deacon had told me, and the events of the night.

"But this is extraordinary!" David said. He was frowning at the feather and the snatch of fur, which we had brought with us. "An animal unknown to science." David, of course, was a veterinarian.

"So it is true, then?" Adam said. "You know of nothing which could have left such traces?"

"I do not," said David. "A pine marten, perhaps, would kill for fun, a fox, occasionally, but both are wary of humans. And no marten would chase a cow across the parish. A feral dog - but then, what of the feather? Had we never met Quayle," he said, and took Eleanor's other hand, "I might have disbelieved you, or thought such stories foolishness, but I know now there is more to this world than is obvious. Jani, you said you had a plan - what do you need us to do?"

Sitting at the polished mahogany of the library table in the cool sunshine of an English autumn, surrounded by friends, I felt a long way from the arid mountains and snow of Smon T'ang and the Land of Bod. In that country, demons were thought to be common, and every villager knew how to build a demon trap, how to honour the monks and nuns of the monasteries, and how to help perform the rituals to drive away evil for another year. Larkfield, with its green fields and carefully managed woodland, its squat stone church and neatly pinafore'd children, was another country altogether. 

Then I looked at my friends, who had fought Quayle and won, and thought of Sophie making the sign against the evil eye behind her skirts, and took a deep breath. 

"In Smon T'ang," I said, "People thought the land was full of demons. There were demons who haunted the streams, and demons who came with the first snow of winter, and demons who hunted pregnant women. Everyone knew how to combat evil. A necklace with an blessed amulet will avert illness. There are carvings to put on your house, and your saddle. An erect male - Adam, what is the word in English?"

"Member," Adam said. 

"A statue of an erect male member will - did I say something wrong?"

Adam was pink, and getting pinker.

"No," said David. "Not at all, Jani. But in English society, no lady would make reference to...sexual organs. In company."

It was true that the subject had never come up in the polite visits of countryside ladies. I hesitated.

Adam shook his head gently, and smiled at me, still pleasantly flushed. "Jani's a princess," he said. "Not a lady."

"What nonsense," said Eleanor. "As if Jani and I have not discussed such things and more already. In detail."

It was David's turn to blush. I watched, fascinated, until Eleanor said gently, "Do carry on, Jani, dear."

"Such a statue is a powerful symbol of protection," I said firmly. "As are all the symbols of motherhood - creation, love, fertility, symbolised by the female sexual organs."

"I doubt the vicar will countenance the statue of a...a _penis maximus_ in Larkfield," David said.

"I believe he's an Oxford man," Adam said, very dry.

"And thus not uneducated on the subject," said David, grinning.

"Let Jani finish!" said Eleanor.

"Such charms and amulets are useful for averting demons," I said, "Like the demon traps I made for _Kimberley_ , and will do for _Merlin's Keep_ , too. But to drive demons out, there is another tradition. It is a ceremony, in which the nuns and priests wear masks, enacting demons, and the villagers dance and play music loudly enough to drive those demons away. It was a yearly ritual in Smon T'ang, as well as when needed. Sember never let me attend, but I remember enough, I think. And of course the stars must be in the correct alignment."

"This worked?" asked Adam.

"The villages are still safe," I said, thinking of the avalanches and winter storms of Smon T'ang. "Although Sember always said it was superstition."

"You're sure you can remember what to do?" Eleanor asked.

"I'm sure," I said, and indeed as I said so the ritual unfolded in my mind, as if stored safely there just for this moment, colour, cacophony, faith. "The only thing that worries me," I said, "Is that even if we were to ask Sophie, and Mrs Burke, and Edwin, perhaps - that is still only seven of us. In Smon T'ang, everyone was involved."

"Except you and Sember," said David.

"Sember said it was a only a carnival, but he still - what is it?"

Eleanor's face had lit up. It was lovely to see her flushed with enthusiasm, after the horrible nullity of the months she spent with Quayle, and I could not help smiling at her, my greatest friend. 

"Your Sember was right," she said. "Let us make it a carnival. There is a tradition of such, on the borders, and it is not so long since everyone's grandfathers went mumming at Christmas - I would not be at all surprised if the village remembers. We could make costumes, there would be music - it's an excellent plan."

"Of course!" said David. "We could get the schoolchildren involved, too. Mrs Liddy is always asking for ideas - and if we tell the vicar we're celebrating harvest-"

"Witsun," suggested Adam. 

"Perhaps so," said David, just as if I had never seen him coming down from Goose Hill the morning after May Day with hawthorn blossoms in his hair.

"That sounds perfect," I said, and smiled.

It was perfect in more ways than one. When Adam and I invited the schoolmistress, Mrs Liddy, to _Kimberley_ to discuss an end-of-term celebration, she was thrilled by the idea, especially as it would bring the village together.

"The children will be so excited!" she said. "So many families seem to have a hard year - the harvest seemed so promising, but then the fire at the mill was so very damaging, and the potato blight has hit the poorest worse than any corn law."

"We have stores," Adam said. "No one will starve in Larkfield."

"And everyone is grateful for your help, and Miss Lambert's - Mrs Hayward, that is," said Mrs Liddy hurriedly. "The school itself too, of course, not every village has, well, such a progressive-"

"Jani tells me you have a particular interest in music," Adam said hurried, before Mrs Liddy could tie herself in further knots. 

"Why, yes!" said Mrs Liddy. "For the children, of course, I always find the folk songs resonate, although hymns can be so uplifting - I am particularly fond of _O Jerusalem_. Such a rousing chorus!" 

"That is exactly the kind of accompaniment we were considering," Adam said gravely. "Although we must consider all the children - the littlest ones are perhaps best with cymbals, or a drum?"

"Something with a simple beat," Mrs Liddy said. "Of course. Yes. I believe that would be best."

"I did read your composition in _The Modern Folklorist_ ," Adam said. "Really, I cannot but believe we are blessed to have a composer in our own school, especially one aware of the issues involved in staging outside perfomrance with mixed participants. Your own work is both evocative and expressive. Would you consider writing for the play?"

"Well, really," said Mrs Liddy, and straightened her scarf. "I never expected - well. It would be a challenge."

"One you are perfectly capable of meeting, I am sure," said Adam.

"My brother always said - you flatter me, Captain Gascoyne," said Mrs Liddy. Her eyes were sharp. "To some purpose."

Adam laughed. "You are perfectly correct," he said. "There are certain themes - Mrs Liddy, am I correct in thinking that the author of _A Poacher's Lament_ is also the author of _Traces of Fertility Ritual in the Mummery Traditions of the New Forest_?"

"Yes," said Mrs Liddy. Her chin was up.

"And _The Green Man Lives: Imagery and Symbolism in the Misericordia of the Early Tudor Period_?"

"Yes," said Mrs Liddy. 

"I am sure the recent disruptions at _Merlin's Keep_ have not escaped your notice," said Adam.

Mrs Liddy leant back in her chair and chuckled. "I should have considered that the partnership which freed us from Quayle could not but be as observant of Larkfield," she said. "Yes, Captain, I am a folklorist of arcane tradition. I am also not unaware of the malignancy affecting our village. Am I right to assume that you have a plan to rid us of this...whatever it is, and that such a plan involves music? With particularly resonant themes, perhaps?"

Adam was already laughing. His eyes met mine. "Ah, Mrs Liddy," he said. "We should not have under-estimated _you_. My wife..." It was still thrilling for me to say 'my husband'. Adam's face too lightened. "My wife, who has spent some time in a country where such visitations are perhaps better managed, has a plan of action," he said. "Jani?"

So I explained the rituals of banishing demons in Smon T'ang, and how music, dance and costume worked together to create a powerful statement, inimical to the demons of Smon T'ang and, I hoped, to those of Hampshire as well. Mrs Liddy, fascinated, took notes, pausing often to question and elucidate aspects of the rituals. Sophie brought tea, and later, sherry and little macaroons; Mrs Liddy wrote; Adam sat back in his chair and watched me, the light of pride in his eyes. 

At length, Mrs Liddy blotted her last paragraph, and dried her nib on a penholder embroidered with a shaky primrose. "There is only one issue I perceive," she said. "And that is, the making of the masks. Many of my villagers are competent stitchers, but none of us have any expertise in modelling, nor in painting. Costumes we can create, especially if you and Mrs Hayward-" a shadow passed over her face, quickly smoothed away "-would be kind enough to go through your own stores for material. The kind of mask you describe is, I fear, beyond our powers."

"Eleanor has some skill with a paintbrush," I said. "She has promised to assist." This was not strictly true. After the events of the previous year, Eleanor still shrank form the village, feeling she had brought a shadow not easily dispersed.

"Miss Lambert - Mrs Hayward," Mrs Liddy corrected herself again, "Mrs Hayward...has not been well, I believe?"

"There is still bad feeling?" Adam probed, leaning forward.

"More, caution," Mrs Liddy said. "And while one can understand her reticence, to the children, of course, it looks as if she has something to hide..."

"But if she was to involve the children in the making of masks...?" I suggested. "Eleanor is...not quite recovered, perhaps..." for she had periods of gloom that still concerned David and myself, "...but if she could reestablish herself in the village?"

Once again, Mrs Liddy's eyes were sharp. "Yes," she said. "Yes, that would be quite the thing. We have art on Wednesdays, after lunch."

"She'll be there," I said.

The vicar was easier to persuade. He was a little, fussy man, who nevertheless worked hard to support his parishioners and carefully tailored his sermons to their interests. Never more than twenty minutes during the sewing and harvest seasons, a full two hours, followed by soup and bread, in winter, when the church was heated by braziers and the newly stitched kneelers made by his wife's Mother's Union made the pews comfortable for the very old and the very young. Under his fussiness, he was a kind man, and it was easy to persuade him that a children's play would be a useful and charitable venture for the church to support. This was a great boon, for the Sunday School possessed a number of trumpets and cymbals, usually used for Easter, and I could not but feel that even though the vicar would bridle at any comparison between his own faithful Anglicanism and the Buddhism of Smon T'ang, generations of faith had blessed both the trumpets of the monasteries and the bells of Larkfield. 

Also, the Mother's Union were industrious sewers, and once set loose on the chests of fabrics unearthed by Eleanor and myself from the attics of _Merlin's Keep_ and _Kimberley_ , proved remarkably adept at marking the most colourful costumes. Brocaded and tasselled curtains of every hue, fringed dust covers, striped pantaloons, checkered and sprigged muslins - all the carefully preserved fabrics of past housekeepers surrendered to the sharp scissors of the vicar's wife and her helpers, and were transformed into a fantastical array of costumes.

Even as the mothers of the village sewed, the masks too were taking shape. Eleanor was reluctant and guarded at first, and the children shy and cautious, but soon her weekly walks down to the school became daily excursions and she walked with a swing to her stride, her hands blotched with paint and glue and her hair often stained by the brushes she would keep tucking behind her ears. The children were quickly enthusiastic as her grotesque masks took shape, first paper mache, and then painted, with great rolling eyes and lolling tongues, fangs and horns and trailing pierced ears, sporting bells and scarves. 

We were careful too in involving the fathers and brothers of the village, and on the village green a stage was built, solidly constructed, possessing towers and balconies for our musicians, a dance floor, changing rooms, bench seats and boxes. It was an elaborate construction, and demanded a great deal from our Larkfield builders. They did not fail. With Adam and David as willing students, men felled trees, shaped struts and planks, baked tiles and split shingles and thatched. As I had hoped, it proved difficult to maintain a feud when carpenters were dependent on foresters for wood, while tilers had to trust the young men digging clay from the river banks and tending the furnace. 

It was a chance for older men and women to pass on their skills, for young men and girls to take a visible pride in learning, and for village feuds and arguments to be resolved in hard labour. And although whatever was freed by Quayle's death did not leave us, and every day dawned with news of another henhouse raided, of eviscerated sheep and terrified horses, our hearts were hopeful. And it seemed to me - to us - that as time wore on, as the stage grew broader and Eleanor's masks received their final coat of varnish, as Mrs Liddy set the last notes of her new composition down on paper and, clapping her hands, called for her first rehearsals, as the last bells were sewn onto the last swinging sleeves of the last costumes - that shadow did lift. The village was full of laughter and industry. _Merlin's Keep_ and _Kimberley_ had opened their doors to sewing circles and choirs. Streets and houses echoed to the sound of hammers and cymbals and trumpets. 

"You know," Adam said, his arm around my waist as we left _Merlin's Keep_ on the night of the performance. "I think we should do this every year."

I laughed.

It cannot be said that the night's performance was polished. When we had passed through Paris, Adam had taken me to a performance at the Opera which had featured opera singers, trap doors, and smoke machines, so perfectly produced one could sworn the heroine swept off by pirates to a foreign land before your very eyes, and in London we had seen a play so perfectly acted I had had to wipe away tears. But our carnival was ours. We knew every costumed child, from little Jenny Biddle with her half-size cymbals clasped in her chubby hands, always half a beat behind, to the lanky length of Tommy Haltwhistle, hiding his breaking voice behind a six-foot trumpet. We had built our stage and our seats, written out music and choreographed our script, and if I had been careful to insert the rhythms and words of Smon T'ang, the whole was our very own. We whistled and laughed and clapped, we cheered for our hero (Tabitha Jones, in her brother's breeches, with Adam's cavalry sabre) and wept for her little sisters and brothers, carried away by the monstrous shapes of masked, fantastical beasts. We sighed and marvelled at Tabitha's quest, and chanted along with the choir as she forced those beasts to give up their prey. The whole village was there to see our costumed demons driven out, and rejoice in their defeat, just as the whole of Smon T'ang were witnessing their demons too defeated, on this same night, on the other side of the world.

Just like in Smon T'ang, afterwards, there was food and dancing. The drums sounded a different tune, strange to me but setting the villager's feet tapping, and there were fiddles and whistles; our stage was suddenly a dancing floor, and elderly grandpas seemed as limber as their grandchildren, I saw Mary and William whirl by in a flutter of petticoats, while Mrs Burke was as stately as any ship of the line, her white cap sailing across the stage. Even Eleanor and David were dancing, safely and gently, for although Eleanor had not yet confessed her pregnancy I knew that she was carrying their child.

It was December. Although, like the women of Smon T'ang, I carried my child high and small, my feet ached, and I found myself more tired than I would wish to be. I clung to my comfortable chair, and Adam brought us a plate of good rich stew and oatcakes. 

We had brought a guest to Larkfield. Beside me, Professor Manson's spectacles glinted in the light of the bonfire, his usual amiable smile lightened into a broad smile as he watched the dancers. 

I could find no such joy. I had expected - well, I do not know what I had expected. A clap of thunder, perhaps, or the heavens opening. I had never, after all, attended the ceremony at Smon T'ang, and had no idea what to expect. Yet there was nothing. The fiddle beat out a merry tune, the dancers whirled by, a sheep-dog stole a whole ham bone from the trestle tables, and I found my appetite desert me. It seemed, after all, that we had failed.

"What is it, Jani?" asked the Professor.

I turned my shoulder to Adam, for I did not want him to see, yet, my unhappiness. "We worked so hard," I said. "And yet, for what? And what do we do now? Will this horrible man never loose his grip?"

"What do you mean?" asked the Professor, equally softly. He peered at my face, and then suddenly he was smiling again. "Oh, my dear," he said. "Can you not feel it? The darkness has lifted."

"What?" I said. 

"My dear," he said kindly, "This banishment was not the work of a moment. This was the work of months, involving all of you, working together. Tonight was not the climax of your ritual, but the drawing to a end. A wonderful performance, and powerful to be sure, and an admirable carnival too. But your battle against this demon was won the moment the village started to work together, Jani, and that you and Adam, and your friends Eleanor and David, deserve to celebrate. Well done, Jani Gascoyne," he said softly, and bent to kiss my hand. 

"Oh," I said, a little stupidly, and raised my eyes to meet Adam's.

He was smiling, that gentle, loving smile he had brought back from the darkness like a gift. "Thank you," he said.

In that moment, surrounded as we were by our friends, there was just Adam and I alone, aware that we had once again won a battle. I could feel, now, both the weariness in my shoulders, and the slow swell of - not joy, but contentment. We had done well.

Adam reached for my hand, and his smile broadened into a laugh. "And now," he said, "Now, my wife, we have a nursery to build."


End file.
